Anecdotes about Vegas, Low Stakes Poker, and the Characters Who Enjoy Both.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

"Jack-Ball Me!"

I wrote a post on my birthday last
month (see here).It was written after I was awakened around
5AM by a fire alarm. I mentioned in that post that the previous night I had
played in a “crazy dealer’s game at BSC.The game was actually organized by my buddy Mike to celebrate his
birthday, which is the day before mine.Mike
usually does this on birthday and that was just one more reason for me to be in
Vegas on that day.

This year, Mike was kind enough to
actually add my name to the official Birthday event on the Facebook
invitations.Many of the people invited
saw my name and had the same reaction.“Who the hell is ‘Rob’?”It was
actually very touching.

No seriously, it was really nice of
Mike to put my name on there. It makes up for all the times he’s bitched about
how my blog posts are too long to read (preposterous!) or all the times he’s
cracked my pocket Kings.True, every
dealer in Vegas has (or will) cracked my Kings, that’s no great accomplishment.But Mike’s been doing it longer and more
consistently than anyone else.And
honestly, he was cracking my Kings before it was even a thing.

So in an attempt to thank Mike for his
courtesy, I am going to start the story of this game off with Mike’s finest
moment of the affair. Sadly, I didn’t witness it; it happened after I had
left.So I have to rely on second-hand
sources, and I don’t have all the details because I didn’t take notes on it
(since I wasn’t there).But I have three
reliable sources for it.Well, make that
two.Mike was quite drunk and he could
easily have been hallucinating.But both
Brent and Abe insist it really happened.

It seems that after I left the game,
Brent pushed into deal and pushed Mike the very first pot of his down.And the next one.And the next one.And at least six or seven more.Seriously, Brent told me the next night that
Mike had won an incredible number of pots in a row, from the very first one he
dealt.Mike could do no wrong.Sometimes he had monsters and sometimes he
had weak hands but he won with them all.Apparently he even won an Omaha hand with nothing more than a pocket
pair—it seems everyone else missed their draws.It was quite amazing.And since
this game had a ½ kill, after the second one, they were all kill pots.

Next time I saw Mike, he had been too
drunk to recall if I had been there to witness this incredible hot streak of
his.I informed him that Brent had
informed me but I hadn’t seen it myself.Mike was disappointed.He wanted
his epic run to be immortalized on this very blog.You see, Mike only reads my blog when he
appears in the story.

But I said I would work it in to the
post as a personal favor to him.And so
I have.

As with last year, the game was going
to rotate Crazy Pineapple and Omaha High.No stupid “Reverse Hold’em” (as covered in this post).It was 2/4 limit with the
aforementioned half-kill.

The turn-out was quite a bit down from
the previous year (when we had three games going).Not sure why but a lot of folks you’d expect
to show up didn’t.We were never able to
start a second table.One disappointing
no-show was Prudence, for example.In fact, most of the wild, crazy ladies
who’ve attended previous such events were absent.As such, this will almost be a
salacious-free post, sad to report.

What salaciousness there was was
supplied by Angela, one of the truly wonderful people who works at BSC.She’s not a dealer and I’ll just leave it at
that.She’s always incredibly nice to me
and I suspect she treats people who she doesn’t see as often as me just as
well.I’ve never seen her play poker,
but while she was wearing her BSC uniform, she came by the table once or twice
to check in on us and say hello (she was on duty).At one point, of the players in her game ask
to see her “ink.”Until that moment, I
didn’t know she had any ink.And her
response was intriguing.“Well, I’ll
have to take my shirt off.”I don’t
think anybody would have objected to that.Well ok, perhaps her boss.

In fact, later, she did come by with
her shirt off.Her uniform shirt.She was of course completely covered by a
sleeveless t-shirt.And the ink she was
showing off was all on her arm.At
least, the ink that we could see.

And Mike again had his South Park
character figurine with the huge balls that I discussed in last year’s birthday
post (here).He was again asking random women he works
with if they would like to lick his balls.Angela wasn’t interested.Mike
said, “I’ll shave them for you.”As
Angela left the table, she shouted, “You’ll have to wax them.”

One potentially wild, crazy lady who
did show up, albeit briefly, was Didi (see here).I haven’t mentioned her in awhile.She hasn’t been in the room very often
lately.And the last few times I saw
her, she was quite restrained, I witnessed none of the antics that I had
described in my posts about her.She
didn’t even call me “Patch Adams” when she saw me.But on those occasions, she was with her
boyfriend (a regular player in the room as it happens) and that may have had
something to do with her more ladylike behavior.

Didi had some news; she is moving away
from Las Vegas. There are poker rooms in the state she is moving to; I wonder
how her act will play there?She also
brought us all some cupcakes, which were much appreciated.But again, she was quite subdued when she
said hello to me—and wished me a happy birthday.She did ask if I would miss her and I said of
course I would.

Didi and her boyfriend did not stick
around long enough to play, however. I dunno if they would have if there had
been spots for them, or if they had to get somewhere anyway.

One person who was there was a regular
I’m going to call “Kevin.”He’s in the
room playing a lot, and is pals with all the dealers.For some reason, I haven’t actually played
with him more than once or twice.I do
recall him once seeing me and saying “Hi, Rob” and wondering how he knew my
name.

He’s quite nice guy and certainly
didn’t deserve what I did to him on a particular hand.

For awhile, I was just losing chips like
crazy.This despite the fact the game
had started out a lot tamer (less raising, three-betting and capped betting
rounds) than usual for a game of this nature.I just couldn’t hit anything and when that happens, you’d be surprised
at how fast you can bleed chips even in a 2/4 game.

The only way I could win hand, it
seemed, was to get quads.Which I was
getting quite often, at least at first.In a Omaha hand, I had a pair of Jacks, and an Ace to match the suit of
one of the jacks.Don’t remember the
other card.There was an Ace on the
flop, nothing else, but I called a bet (maybe even a bet and a raise).The turn was an Ace.Trip Aces isn’t really a good hand in Omaha,
so I just called a bet, didn’t raise.But the river was also an Ace.Even in friggin’ Omaha, quad Aces is a good hand. I think I bet the hand
and only got one caller, but it was a decent pot.

A little later, I had pocket 8’s in
Omaha and who knows what else.I paid to
see the flop, which had a couple more 8s on it.I
checked it, there was a bet and a raise which I of course called.I checked the turn, and someone bet, and of
course I called.I believe there at
least three of us left to see the river.I checked again, assuming the aggressor would bet out and I could make
my check-raise.But this time he
checked, and there was no betting action on the river.“No one bet into my quads?” I exclaimed as I
showed my hand.

Then came the hand against Kevin.This was Crazy Pineapple.I had pocket 3’s and some meaningless
card.I limped in and then had to call a
raise from Kevin.The flop was Ace-3-x,
two clubs.I led out because of the
flush draw.Kevin raised, and I
called.Did he have a set of Aces?Or merely Ace-King, Ace-Queen, that kind of
hand?I just called.I really was thinking it was set over set,
and that maybe I should just call it down.

Until I saw the turn, which was the
case 3.Now of course I checked and
Kevin bet and I just called.I can’t
tell you anything about the river card except it wasn’t an Ace. I’m not sure if
I led out this time and he raised, or if I checked and he bet.But he only bet or raised one time.When I raised, he just called (and remember
this was limit, so it was increments of four bucks). Did he really put me on
quads?

Umm yes, he did.He showed his boat, Aces full. He had flopped
a set of Aces. I showed my quad 3’s.So I had one-outed him.He was smart enough to lose the minimum
there.He’s such a good guy, I came as
close as possible to feeling sorry for taking his money. I mean, when I
apologized for the suck-out, it almost felt like I meant it.

And then I went like forever without
winning a hand.Seriously, I was soon
losing money.How the heck do you lose
money in a limit game when you get quads three friggin’ times?And in case you’re wondering, because we
weren’t playing Hold’em, there was no jackpot drop and thus no high bonuses for
us.

But somehow I did lose moneyIn fact, I was getting short stacked.Now, back when I was a regular limit player,
I would never allow myself to get short stacked, because that’s really stupid
to do in a limit game.You need to have
ammo if you do get a monster and you control to a large degree how much your
risk, unlike NL where your stack is in play on every hand.I would see players buy in for $20 and think
how crazy that was.They ran out of
money long before the river and thus, when they did have a winning hand, they’d
win a lot less than they could have.

But by now it was getting late I kind
of felt if I ran out of my buy in (I think it was $100 and then I added on $40
when I was running low), I’d just call it a night.I thought I had enough anyway because there
wasn’t as much raising and capping as in the past.Until this hand.I had Ace-10 of diamonds and a random card in
Crazy Pineapple.I called a raise but
then it was re-raised and I think it ended up being capped before the
flop.I flopped the nut flush draw so I
had to call a few bets and raises.On the
turn, I picked up a gut-shot to the wheel. By now there was a 5,3,and 2 on the
board.So of course I called a bet and a
raise.I had $6 left!

The river was a four, but not a
diamond. I really didn’t think my straight was good, fearing the other guy had at
least a 6-high straight.So when he bet
(and everyone else folded), I just called and kept the two bucks.I was gonna throw it to the dealer if I
lost.But all he had was the Ace too and
we chopped it up.There was so much
money in from the other players that I actually had a pretty nice stack after
that, more than enough to play and call all the raises I would have to without
rebuying.

Which brings us to Michelle.Michelle of course is the dealer who “never
pushes me a pot.”I used to keep a
running tally in my head of now many pots she owed me (down from 100, because she
once said she owed me 100 pots).But
that’s as a dealer. As a player, Michelle is the poster girl for the term “No
fold’em, hold’em.”In her case, it doesn’t
matter whether she’s playing limit. 1/2 NL or even 2/5 NL (or so I’m told), she
never met a hand she didn’t like.At the
previous Crazy Pineapple/Omaha game, Michelle’s boyfriend gave her this advice,
“Try to fold at least one hand per orbit, honey.”

When Michelle first arrived, she
couldn’t get into the game as we were full.Then Mike took a break and allowed Michelle to play over him (play with
his chips).Of course, in a serious
game, this would be strictly forbidden, but the rules are looser in a game such
as this, which is basically a home game.

And when she was playing with Mike’s
money, she was playing much tighter and saner than she does when she’s playing
with her own money. She’s actually a decent player when she wants to be.It’s just that, left to her own devices, she
wants to see every flop, almost every turn, and pretty much all of the rivers
too.

Mike returned, but soon a seat opened
up and Michelle took it.She was in a
particularly good mood.In fact,
although she hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, she was acting rather tipsy.She played every hand of course, and wasn’t
particularly shy about saying what card she needed.

Thus one time, before the flop, she
shouted out, “Come on, Jack-Ball me!”I
believe she probably addressed the dealer by name, and it may very well have
been Jack—but remember, Jack isn’t his real name, so it wasn’t as ironic as it
sounds.I think the first time she
shouted this, Jack did indeed put a Jack on the flop.My memory is hazy but she might have hit a
set of Jacks that time.

Everyone was laughing at her “Jack-Ball
me” line and it became a running gag.For awhile, she said it before every flop, even though she surely couldn’t
need a Jack every time. Sometimes there would be a Jack on the flop and she’d
actually fold to a bet, and we’d remind her that she had indeed been “Jack-Balled.”
But she’d fold anyway.Other times she’d
raise when there was no Jack on the flop and we’d joke about that too.And once she got tired of saying it (after
about 45 minutes or so), we’d always point out to her whenever there was a Jack
on the board and remind her that she had been “Jack-Balled.”

It was inevitable that Michelle and I
would eventually get into a hand.Soon
after the wheel hand I described, I had Ace-7-6, all hearts, in Crazy Pie.An off duty dealer had raised preflop and
Michelle and I and maybe some others called.Note: I’m not giving the off duty dealer a blog name because I’m too
tired to think of one.If and when he does
something else blogworthy, I’ll come up with something.Anyway, the flop was 5-3-2, two diamonds and
no hearts.In a game like this, it’s
almost always worth it to call a flop bet if you have a gut shot.The preflop raiser bet, Michelle and I called
(and maybe some others) and I threw out the Ace and went for the gut shot.

Which I hit on the turn, a lovely 4,
and not a diamond.What had happened was
that the preflop raiser, (a dealer in this very room), had actually bet $4
blind blind before the turn card was exposed.Michelle immediately raised it to $8 as soon as she saw the 4.At which point, the dealer tried to claim
that he hadn’t actually bet the $4 and tried to take it back!WTF?He of all people should have known his bet was binding.But the actual dealer had to call the floor
over to rule.He tried to explain why it
wasn’t a bet—I didn’t quite get what argument he was making—but of course the
floor ruled that his bet stayed and Michelle was allowed to make it $8.

Which was great for me because that
allowed me to make it $12.The dealer
folded and Michelle just called.She
checked the river and called my $4 bet.She had just the 6 for the straight and she was pretty sure that I had
the higher straight, as I did.As she
said, explaining why she didn’t raise me back, “You can’t raise Robert….he
never plays a hand.”Damn, I do have to
loosen up my image, don’t I?

That hand put me pretty close to even
and I played until we switched back to Omaha.I thanked Mike for the party, wished him a happy birthday and said my
goodbyes.

In addition to learning about Mike’s
incredible run the next day, I heard that after the table thinned, they
actually played a round of Razz.This is
significant because it is a game that Abe excels at.Except that he usually gets the best Razz
hands when he’s playing Hold’em.When he
told me he won some nice hands at Razz, I said I assumed he would get nothing
but quads playing it.